Anyone who tries to draw lessons from Cindy Chavez's convincing victory over Teresa Alvarado has to remember first that the second supervisorial district is a bubble within a bubble -- the most liberal district in a liberal county.

Having noted that caveat, Tuesday's results produced several notes about the future of politics in San Jose and the county. Here, in descending importance, are four:

A) Labor put its queen into play and won big. Anyone who has played chess knows that the moment the queen enters the fray is fraught with risk -- but also promises enormous power.

Chavez, the former head of the South Bay Labor Council, ran a superb race, the most disciplined local campaign since Zoe Lofgren beat Tom McEnery for Congress in 1994.

Cindy Chavez on election night at the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council headquarters in San Jose, Calif., on July 30, 2013.
(Nhat V. Meyer, Bay Area News Group)

The winner insisted on a unified message, taking the reins herself and making sure that all the parts of her coalition -- labor, the Democratic Party, her own campaign -- worked in tandem. And she surmounted the public's view of her as just a labor leader.

That unity of message was not true of Alvarado, who went through two consultants during a short campaign. Almost until the end, when she sent out a "Shady Birds'' piece trying to tie Chavez to the disgraced George Shirakawa Jr., she played the good cop to the bad cop of the independent committee campaigning on her behalf. And she arguably missed opportunities. When Shirakawa was charged anew with sending out a phony mailer, she sent out a polite message that did not mention him or her opponent.

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B) Crime trumped reform. At the end, it was hard to remember that this was an election to fill the seat of one of the most ethically challenged politicians in the county. In east San Jose, people are more worried about an upswing of crime than about transparency of government.

The candidates for San Jose mayor in 2014 will undoubtedly take notice. After more than six years of embracing the fiscally conservative and reform-minded Chuck Reed, the electorate may be more open to a candidate who promises a get-tough stance toward crime. That could help a labor-friendly candidate like Supervisor Dave Cortese, who can argue -- whether it's totally accurate or not -- that the decrease in cops has led to the upswing in crime.

C) County Executive Jeff Smith can rest easier. One of the reasons that Shirakawa lasted so long was that the county bureaucracy was slow to call him on his excesses.

Smith, a savvy politician in his own right, has cultivated ties with labor leaders such as Chavez and Bob Brownstein. An Alvarado election would have put his job in jeopardy.

As it is, labor will have a solid majority on the board of Ken Yeager, Chavez and Cortese. And my guess is that Chavez will become the leader.

D) The "R'' word will go deeper underground. Again, the second district is solidly Democratic. But in retrospect, it seems clear that Alvarado, who needed money, had trouble handling the endorsement she got from the Republicans. Chavez's supporters labeled her "Republican darling Teresa Alvarado,'' which forced Alvarado to defend her solid Democratic legacy. Though she got help from the GOP, she wasn't ready to embrace the Republicans either. It's a reminder that anyone sporting the GOP label in San Jose -- think Pete Constant in his run for mayor -- faces an uphill battle to victory.